discolored at the sleeves--a hollow locust shell, so to speak. Her note was
on official stationery, heavily scented and yellow with age.
"Your gifts bring boundless sorrow.
"Tearfully I don this Chinese robe,
And having dampened its sleeves, I now return it."
The hand was very old-fashioned. Smiling, he read and reread the
poem. Murasaki wondered what had so taken his fancy.
The messenger slipped away, fearing that Genji might be amused as
well at the bounty he had received. The women were all whispering and
laughing. The safflower princess, so inflexibly conservative in her ways,
could be discommodingly polite.
"A most courtly and elegant lady," said Genji. "Her conservative style
is unable to rid itself of Chinese robes and wet sleeves. I am a rather
conservative person myself, and must somewhat grudgingly admire this
tenacious fidelity. Hers is a style which considers it mandatory to mention
'august company' whenever royalty is in the vicinity, and when the ex-
change is of a romantic nature a reference to fickleness can always be
counted on to get one over the caesura." He was still smiling. "One reads
<P 408>
all the handbooks and memorizes all the gazetteers, and chooses an item
from this and an item from that, and what is wanting is originality. She
once showed me her father's handbooks. You can't imagine all the poetic
marrow and poetic ills I found in them. Somewhat intimidated by these
rigorous standards, I gave them back. But this does seem a rather wispy
product from so much study and erudition."
He was a little too amused, thought Murasaki, who answered most
solemnly: "And why did you send them back? We could have made copies
and given them to the little girl. I used to own some handbooks too, but
I'm afraid I let the worms have them. I'm not the student of poetry some
people are."
"I doubt that they would have contributed to the girl's education.
Girls should not be too intense. Ignorance is not to be recommended, of
course, but a certain tact in the management of learning is."
He did not seem disposed to answer the safflower princess.
"She speaks of returning your gifts. You must let her have something
in return for her poem."
Essentially a kind man, Genji agreed. He dashed off an answer. This
would seem to be what he Lent:
"'Return,' you say--ah,'turn,' I set you mean,
Your Chinese robe, prepared for lonely slumber.
"I understand completely."
<W Murasaki Shikibu>{Translated by Edward G.Seidensticker}
<T The Tale of Genji>
<K 3>
<C 23>{The First Warbler}
<N 1>
<P 409>
New Year's Day was cloudless. There is joy inside the humblest of hedges
as the grass begins to come green among patches of snow and there is a
mist of green on the trees while the mists in the air tell of the advent of
spring. There was great joy in the jeweled precincts of Genji's Rokujo~
mansion, where every detail of the gardens was a pleasure and the ladies'
apartments were perfection.
<N 2>
The garden of Murasaki's southeast quarter was now the most beauti-
ful. The scent of plum blossoms, wafting in on the breeze and blending
with the perfumes inside, made one think that paradise had come down
to earth. Murasaki may have had her small worries, but she lived in peace
and security. She had assigned the prettier of her young women to the
service of Genji's little daughter, and kept in her own service older women
whose beauty was in fact of a statelier sort and who were extremely
particular about their dress and grooming. They were gathered in little
groups, helping the New Year with its "teething," taking New Year's
cakes, and otherwise welcoming another year of the thousand which they
laughingly appropriated for themselves. Genji came in. They had been
caught with their ribbons undone, so to speak, and they quickly brought
themselves to order.
"And are all these congratulations for me?" He smiled. "But you must
<P 410>
have little wishes of your own. Tell me what they are, and I will then think
of some that you forgot." He seemed the very incarnation of New Year
gladness.
Chu~jo~ thought herself privileged to speak. "Assured by the mirror
cake that ten centuries are in store for your august lordship, how should
I think of anything for myself?"
All morning, callers streamed in and out of the Rokujo~ mansion. Genji
dressed with great care for a round of calls upon his ladies. One would not
have easily wearied of looking at him when his preparations were finished.
"Your women were having such a good time that they made me envious?"
he said to Murasaki. "Let us now have a congratulatory note for ourselves.
"The mirror of this lake, now freed from ice,
Offers an image of utter peace and calm."
And indeed it did reflect an image of very great beauty and felicity.
"Upon the cloudless mirror of this lake,
Clear is the image, for ten thousand years."
Everything about the scene seemed to make manifest a bond that was
meant to last a thousand years--and New Year's Day this year fell on the
Day of the Rat.
<N 3>
He went to his daughter's rooms. Her page girls and young serving
women were out on the hill busying themselves with seedling pines, too
intoxicated with the occasion, it would seem, to stay inside. The Akashi
lady--it was clear that she had gone to enormous trouble--had sent over
New Year delicacies in "bearded baskets" and with them a warbler on a
very cleverly fabricated pine branch:
"The old one's gaze rests long on the seedling pine,
Waiting to hear the song of the first warbler,
in a village where it does not sing."
Yes, thought Genji, it was a lonely time for her. One should not weep
on New Year's Day, but he was very close to tears.
"You must answer her yourself," he said to his daughter. "You are
surely not the sort to begrudge her that first song." He brought ink and
brush.
<P 411>
She was so pretty that even those who were with her day and night
had to smile. Genji was feeling guilty for the years he had kept mother and
daughter apart.
Cheerfully, she jotted down the first poem that came to her:
"The warbler left its nest long years ago,
But cannot forget the roots of the waiting pine."
He went to the summer quarter of the lady of the orange blossoms.
There was nothing in her summer gardens to catch the eye, nothing that
was having its moment, and yet everything was quietly elegant. They were
as close as ever, she and Genji, despite the passage of the years. It was an
easy sort of intimacy which he would not have wished to change. They
had their talks, pleasant and easy as talks between husband and wife
seldom are. He pushed the curtain between them slightly aside. She made
no effort to hide herself. Her azure robe was as quietly becoming as he had
hoped it would be. Her hair had thinned sadly. He rather wished she might
be persuaded to use a switch, though not so considerable a one as to attract
notice. He knew that no other man was likely to have been as good to her,
and in the knowledge was one of his private pleasures. What misfortunes
might she not have brought upon herself had she been a less constant sort!
<P 412>
Always when he was with her he thought first of his own dependability
and her undemanding ways. They were a remarkable pair. They talked
quietly of the year that had passed, and he went on to see Tamakazura.
She was not yet really at home, but her rooms were in very good taste.
She had a large retinue of women and pretty little girls. Though much still
needed to be done by way of furnishing and decorating, the rooms already
wore an air of clean dignity. Even more striking was the elegance of their
occupant. She seemed to enhance the glow of her yellow dress and send
it into the deepest corners of the room, taking away the last gloomy
shadow. It was a scene, he thought, which could never seem merely ordi-
nary Perhaps because of her trials, her hair was just a little sparse at the
edges. The casual flow drew wonderfully clean lines down over her skirts.
And what might have happened to her if he had not brought her here?
(The question may have suggested that he was already thinking of certain
changes.) There was no barrier between them, though she was very much
on her guard. It was a strange situation with a certain dreamlike quality
about it that both interested and amused him.
"I feel as if you had been with us for years. Everything seems so cozy.
I could not wish for more. I hope that by now you are feeling quite at
home. Today you might just possibly want to go over to the southeast
quarter, where you will find a young lady at her New Year's music lesson.
You need not have the slightest fear that anyone will say anything un-
pleasant about you."
"I shall do exactly as you wish me to."
In the circumstances, a most acceptable answer.
He went in the evening to the northwest quarter and called on the
Akashi lady. He was greeted by the perfume from within her blinds, a
delicate mixture that told of the most refined tastes. And where was the
lady herself? He saw notebooks and the like disposed around an inkstone.
He took one up, and another. A beautifully made koto lay against the
elaborate fringe of a cushion of white Loyang damask, and in a brazier of
equally fine make she had been burning courtly incenses, which mingled
with the perfume burnt into all the furnishings to most wonderful effect.
Little practice notes lay scattered about. The hand was a superior and most
individual one, in an easy cursive style that allowed no suggestion of
pretense or imposture. Pleased at having heard from her daughter, it would
seem, she had been amusing herself with jottings from the anthologies.
And there was a poem of her own:
"Such happiness! The warbler among the blossoms
Calls across the glen to its old nest."
"I had waited so long," she had added; and, to comfort herself:"'I
dwell upon a hill of blossoming plums.'"
<P 413>
He smiled one of his most radiant smiles.
He had just taken up a brush when the lady came in. Luxury had not
made her any less modest or retiring. Yes, she was different. Her dark
tresses gleamed against the white of her robe, not so thick that they might
have seemed assertive. He decided to spend the night with her, though
sorry indeed if in other quarters the New Year must begin with spasms of
jealousy. She was dear to him in a very special way, he thought somewhat
uneasily. In Murasaki's quarter he may have been the object of sterner
reproaches than he had for himself.
It was not yet full daylight when he left. He might, thought the
Akashi lady, have awaited a more seemly hour. In the southeast quarter
he sensed that the welcome was mixed.
"I dozed off, and there I was sleeping like a baby, and no one woke
me." He was charmingly ingenuous, but Murasaki pretended to be asleep.
He lay down beside her. The sun was high when he arose.
<N 4>
New Year's callers kept him busy that day and were his excuse for
avoiding a confrontation. The whole court came. There was music and
there were lavish gifts. Each of the guests was determined to cut the finest
figure, though in fact (I say it regretfully) no one could challenge the host.
By themselves they were strong enough lights, but Genji dimmed them all.
The lowliest among them made sure that he was looking his best when he
came to Rokujo~, and the highest seemed to have something new and
original on his mind. A quiet breeze coaxed perfume from the flowers and
especially from the plums just coming into bloom at the veranda. "How
grand this house:" the festivities were at a climax, and came to an end with
"the three-branched _sakigusa_." Genji himself helped with the concluding
passages. Restrained though his part might be, it always seemed to make
a very great difference.
<N 5>
In all the other quarters, there were only distant echoes of horse and
carriage, to make the ladies feel that they were living in an outer circle of
paradise where the lotuses were slow to open. The east lodge at Nijo~ was
of course even farther away. Life may have been a little uneventful for the
ladies there, but they were spared the more bitter trials of the world, and
would have thought it out of place to complain. Neglected they unques-
tionably were, and they might have wished for something different; but
their lives were calm and comfortable and secure. The nun could pursue
her prayers and the connoisseur her poetry texts and neither need fear
distraction.
When the busy days were over he went calling, with careful
ceremony, for the safflower princess was after all a princess. Her hair had
been her principal and indeed her only charm when she was young, but
now the flow was a White trickle, and her profile was better not seen. He
<P 414>
looked tactfully away. The white robe which he had sent had, he feared,
been rather better by itself. She seemed quite congealed in a frosting of
white over something of a dark, dull gray so stiff that it rustled dryly. And
was there nothing else, no underclothing to keep her warm? The safflower
nose was aglow all the same, bright through the densest mists. He sighed
and rearranged her curtains, and she seemed not to guess why. He could
not help being touched at the pleasure which the visit, evidence that he
still thought of her, so obviously gave. Poor, lonely thing, he must do
something for her from time to rime. She too was rather special--leastways
